Homemade Essential Oil Diffuser

Photo by Victoria Cohen

This essential oil recipe, which challenges us to think outside the box, comes to us from Victoria Cohen (@almondsandasana). Instead of tossing those blood orange peels after you devour them (how delicious are they!?), try turning them into a delightful, springtime, citrus peel essential oil. It's an easy way to make your house smell incredible and use up your leftovers!

Author's note: "This is a wonderful way to use up leftover peels from your citrus (lemon/lime/grapefruit/orange) you name it. I actually do this in the winter time when I want a holiday smell in the house, although then I use fresh cranberries, cinnamon, cloves, apple cider, and orange slices. For this particular Spring version of my aromatic "homemade essential oil diffuser," I specifically wanted something fruitier and something that would use up all of my citrus peels. During my pregnancy, I have been on a big citrus kick, mainly downing a bowl of cottage cheese and an Imperfect grapefruit every morning - seriously I add 5-7 of them to my box every week without question. But last week I also saw blood oranges on the list and thought why not! Well, I peeled one to use for this moroccan chicken taco dinner and had the extra peels. I also had my extra grapefruit peels from the morning and figured they would be the perfect aromatics for my home scent."

Ingredients:

Peels from 1 grapefruit and 1 blood orange (plus any other bits you didn't eat)

1 cup apple juice or apple cider for the sweet smell

1 cinnamon stick

3 cups of water

Instructions:

Add it all to a pot and bring to a simmer, keep at a low simmer until liquid gets low and then just keep refilling with water.

Just let the pot simmer on the stove and let it permeate through your home!

You can keep it going for a couple of days at a time (turning off at night) then make a new batch.